For most of his life,
Duane Allman was inseparable from his
brother Gregg. Raised by their widowed
mom in Nashville and Daytona Beach, they
learned music together and played
side-by-side in bands. After spending
their journeymen days in the Daytona
Beach-based Houserockers, they began
touring as the Allman Joys, moved to
L.A. to form the Hour Glass, and finally
hit their stride in 1969 with the
formation of the Allman Brothers Band.
Just two-and-a-half years later, Duane
was gone, killed in an October 1971
motorcycle crash.

While
I was an editor for Guitar Player
magazine, I began assembling interviews
and other materials for a Duane Allman
biography. I suggested to my
editor-in-chief, Tom Wheeler, that we do
an October 1981 cover story
commemorating Duane’s life. Tom not only
gave the proposal a thumbs-up, but
suggested we make it a special issue.
This allowed me to supplement my
overview with materials gathered from
interviews with Gregg Allman, Dickey
Betts, Pete Carr, Billy Gibbons, John
Hammond, Johnny Winter, and the guys who
worked with Duane at Muscle Shoals. In
the magazine, their reminiscences were
presented in an “as told to” format, and
the interviews themselves were never
published in their entirety. I didn’t
complete the Duane biography, but I am
happy to share my interviews with his
fans. The most poignant of these was
done with Duane’s brother on July 6,
1981. Gregg began the conversation.

****

I think that’s
really nice, man, that you want to write
about Duane.

Can you fill in
the early years for me?

Okay. Alrighty.

Duane was a year
older than you?

A year and 18
days.

Were you the only
two kids?

That was it.

Your father died
when you were young?

Ah, yes. He died
in ’49. I was two and Duane was three.

Was that an
accident?

Uh, no. He was
shot in the Korean War.

There
was a Rolling Stone story that came out
on you in 1975 . . . .

Well, you can’t go
by that. [Laughs.] No, I was just
kidding you! I wasn’t, really. What’d it
say?

I just wondered if
the article was accurate.

Knowing the Stone,
maybe a tenth of it. They probably got
our name spelled right. I don’t know if
you’re a real fan of the Rolling Stone,
but I’m really not. I’m a fan of
Downbeat, Guitar Player, and Keyboard
Player. People that know what they’re
talking about, you know, instead of
writing a bunch of politics and stuff.

They mentioned
that your dad got killed by a
hitchhiker.

That’s true.

Is your mother
still alive?

Yes, she is.

Did anyone in your
family play music?

My father sang,
but not professionally. He sang pretty
well.

Did you have
instruments around the house when you
were young?

No. No, we didn’t.
When we started school, we both wanted
to get into the band. We went to
military school, and we both wanted to
play trumpet, and we lost interest in
it. My mother always called it her
folly, because back then $200 for a
trumpet, you know, that was quite a bit.

You were raised by
your mom?

That’s right.

Did she work while
you were kids?

Yes, she did.
That’s why we had to go off to military
school.

You began playing
guitar before Duane?

Right.

How did you get
started with that?

We moved from
Nashville in 1957 – I guess I was 11
years old, about to turn 12. No, wait a
minute – I may have been younger than
that. Anyway, we moved away from
Nashville and moved to Daytona Beach,
Florida. But every summer we would go
back and visit my grandmother and stay
there for the summer. We really missed
Nashville because we grew up there, you
know. She lived in this housing project,
and there was this guy across the
street. And he had an old Belltone
guitar, which later, I think, turned
into Silvertone – I’m not sure. One hot
summer day I was sitting on the porch,
and I walked over there and asked him if
I could pick it up. He said sure. The
strings were about an inch and a half
off the neck – one of those bleeders,
you know. So I just got really enchanted
with this. By this time, this is like
1959.

So when I got back
home, I thought, “Well, I’m gonna get me
one of those guitars.” I didn’t know
which end of it to play, but there was
something about it that just really
intrigued me. Because he’d sit there and
he’d play “Wildwood Flower” and “Long
Black Veil” – I think that’s the only
two songs he knew. He knew very little,
a real country dude. Jimmy Bain – that
was his name. So I got me a paper route
and worked on it from March of ’60 until
about the end of school, right when
school let out. Cleared all of $21,
something like that – they got me on the
office payment: “Yeah, we pay at the
office,” right? You know how that goes.
So I rode my bicycle over to Sears.
There was a Silvertone there that I
wanted. It was $21.95. And the guy
wouldn’t trust me for the 95 cents, so I
had to go home and borrow it from my
mother. I rode back over the next day
and bought it and started playing it and
playing it. I got one of those Mel Bay
books, and I didn’t eat or sleep. I
didn’t do nothing but play that guitar.
I just was crazy about it. I learned how
to make a barre chord, and that really
started it.

Was that an
acoustic?

Right. This friend
of mine turned me on to some Jimmy Reed
albums and taught me that lick. So then
my brother, he says, “What do we have
here?” So I taught him what I knew, and
he picked it up real quick. I mean, he
was real sharp. So he quit school.

How old was Duane
then?

Well, I started
playing when I was 12 years old. I
jumped a little time on you there. It’s
been a while. I started playing when I
was 12, and I got my first electric
guitar that November. November 10, 1960.
It was a Fender Music Master. It was
really easy to play. By then I’d met
other guys that had guitars that had
been playing longer. It was just like
more and more. I really got turned on to
Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and
Little Richard, Presley – you know, the
whole rock and roll thing. And then I
met this black cat named Floyd [Miles].
By this time Duane, he had to have one.
So to keep us from fighting, mom got him
one, right? It was a Les Paul Junior,
one of the old ones. It was solid, a
real thin body, one of those purple
ones. Just one black pickup on the back.
So we started playing together, and we
really became friends at that time.

Were you like
typical brothers before then?

Oh, yeah. Fight
every day.

What did Duane
want to be when he was little?

Uh, that’s a good
question. I’m not sure. He didn’t like
school, but he loved to read. He was
always reading something. He read books
like Papillon, The Trilogy. He read all
kind of stuff, just anything. He liked
real adventurous stories and fiction –
stuff like that.

Was he a good kid?

No, he was a
rascal. He was a rascal. So we put a
band together. Well, first we joined a
band that was already together. It was
called the Houserockers and the Untils.
The rhythm section, the band, was the
Houserockers, and the three black
singers up front were the Untils.

Were both of you
playing guitar?

They only needed
one guitar player, so we switched off
every other night. This was like the
summertime of 1963. I was like a junior
in high school, something like that.
Anyway, one of those black singers was
Floyd, and I watched him because I
really dug his singing. See, in the
beginning, the first band that we put
together ourselves was called the
Shufflers. I played lead guitar and
Duane sang. And then after he quit
school, he’d stay home and, man, he
learned it fast.

He played all the
time?

All the time.

Did he cop off of
records or make it up himself?

Both.

Do you remember
his favorite solos or players?

B.B. King – he
loved B.B. King! Over the years he loved
everybody from Chuck Berry to Kenny
Burrell. I mean, you name it. He dug
everybody. Back then, Johnny Guitar
Watson – he liked him. He got into that
real old blues stuff, loved Robert
Johnson. He just loved any kind of
guitar playing.

He never had
lessons?

No. The only lessons he had was us sitting around the
house, trial and error. And then he had
a friend named Jim Shepley. I think
Shepley was a couple of years older than
him and had started a couple of years
before. He’s the one that turned us on
to Jimmy Reed records. He had a bunch of
these hot licks down. I thought, “Man,
this guy is something else!” So he sat
with him all the time. Before he quit
school, they’d both skip school and
shoot pool and play guitar. He learned a
whole lot from Shepley, and that was
probably his best friend back then.

Is Jim Shepley
still around?

Yeah, he sure is.
I hope he reads this. I think he lives
in New Haven. He was in a band with Bob
Greenlee, who used to be with Root Boy
Slim and the Sex Change Band. I’m not
sure if Shepley was in that band or not,
but I know Greenlee was. And usually
where Greenlee was, Shepley was. But I
don’t think he’s doing much at all now.
It’s been years. I remember at one of
the first few gigs that the Allman
Brothers played, we played in New Haven,
and sure enough, Shepley and Greenlee
were both there. Duane was just – you
could have knocked him over with a
feather, man. It was great!

Was Greenlee
another guy who played with Duane when
he was young?

Right, he played
in the Houserockers.

Gregg and Duane, at
left,tearing it up with the Allman Joys.

What were your
other early professional experiences and
bands leading into Hour Glass?

Well, after I got
out of high school in ’65, we had a band
called the Allman Joys.

Did you do much
touring?

Touring? I don’t
know if you could call it that. We did
what they called the chitlin circuit –
you know, Mobile, Alabama, at the Stork
Club. We worked like seven nights a
week, six sets a night, 45 minutes a
set. It was four of us, and we made $444
a week.

Was it unusual for
a white band to be playing the chitlin
circuit?

Oh, no. Chitlin
circuit – that means just the clubs and
beer joints.

Did the Allman
Joys record?

We recorded one
song, one 45. We recorded it at
Bradley’s Barn in Nashville, which is
now burned down. It was “Spoonful” by
Willie Dixon.

Did you sing it?

I sure did. And it
was a terrible recording.

What happened
after the Allman Joys?

Let me see. One of
them got drafted, one chose to go his
own way, and so Duane and I met up with
Johnny Sandlin and Paul Hornsby and Pete
Carr. They had a band called Five
Minutes. We formed a band, and we called
it the Allman Joys for a while. And then
we thought, “Well, that’s wrong,” so for
a very short time we called it the
Allman-Act. And Bill McKuen came through
St. Louis, where we were playing. Johnny
McKuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt band is
his older brother. They took us to L.A.,
and they came up with the name Hour
Glass.

How do you view
your period in L.A.?

That period with
the Hour Glass? It was pretty scary, you
know, because I’d never been past the
Mississippi. I’d been to New York once.
I don’t know. It just seemed like it was
forever away. We didn’t play much. For
some reason, there was no clubs or
anything around there to play in. I
mean, there was, but . . . Our first gig
was with the Doors at – well, it’s the
Aquarius Theater now, but at that time
it was the Hullaballoo Club. And that
scared me to death! I could barely sing.
My knees were knocking together, because
there must have been 2,000 people in
that place. The whole thing just kind of
turned sour. Both albums came out, and
they’d hand us a washtub full of demos
and say, “Pick out your new album.” All
this time now, I was songwriting. I did
get a few on those two albums. I don’t
know if you’ve heard those albums or
not.

The ones with “Out
of the Night” and “Power of Love.”

Yeah, right.

They’re still
selling them.

Yeah, yeah. That’s
what I hear. In the beginning, when we
were in St. Louis and they made us a
proposition, I said, “No, let’s don’t
go.” Duane said, “Yeah! Let’s go! Let’s
go! Let’s do it.” So we went. I guess we
were there for, oh, part of ’66, ’67,
’68 – for about two-and-a-half years.
And Duane just finally said, “Man, I’ve
had it with this bullshit. I’m leavin’.
We can take the band and go on back home
where we belong – right down South.” We
owed Liberty Records about $40,000. They
said, “Well, we’ll let y’all go, but
we’ll put a lawsuit on you. But we won’t
do it if he stays” – pointing to me,
right? – “to work with our studio band.”
So I stayed. And the rest of them, they
really didn’t like it. They were all
cussin’ me on the way out the door. They
thought I wanted to stay out there,
which I did not. So there was no
lawsuit, and I cut two records with
them. They’re with a 20-piece orchestra.
I hope you’ve never heard those.

No, I haven’t.

Please, don’t.
Anyway, so I stayed out there another 11
months, and that’s the longest I’d ever
been away from my brother. That’s when I
wrote “Cross to Bear.” I was staying
with this chick, and she was really
running me around. I wrote
“Black-Hearted Woman” while I was out
there. So anyway, one Sunday morning my
brother called me on the phone, and he
said he had this band together – had two
lead guitar players. I thought, “Boy,
that’s weird.” He said, “And two
drummers,” and I said, “That’s real
weird!” “And a bass player.” And he
said, “But everybody is pretty much into
their axe, and nobody as yet has written
much, and they don’t really like to
sing. So why don’t you come on down here
and round this thing up and send it
somewhere.” Which is probably the finest
compliment he ever gave me in my life. I
said, “Let me hang up this phone, man. I
got to get going.” I beat feet over
there as fast as I could to
Jacksonville. And that was the Allman
Brothers’ start. It was March 26, 1969.

The difference in
sound between the Hour Glass and the
Allman Brothers is just amazing.

Yeah, it is. I
mean, it’s been a long time since I’ve
heard any of that Hour Glass stuff, but
when I hear it I can’t believe it.

In between this
time, was Duane playing in Muscle
Shoals?

Right. He was just
on the staff down there at Rick Hall’s.

Did he ever
mention what his favorite studio
projects were?

He liked to play
with Wilson Pickett – I know that. And
he loved playing with Aretha, and he
loved King Curtis. They was real tight.
And he loved the Herbie Mann. He liked
all of them. I think Layla was probably
his favorite.

Did he have much
to say about working with Eric Clapton?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I
was there when it all happened. Our
whole band was there. See, we were
playing in town, and Clapton came out to
the gig.

Was Duane nervous?

Scared him to
death! He came and sit right down in
front, right on the grass. Of course,
Clapton, every time you see him he looks
different. I didn’t notice him until
toward the end, and I got shaky myself.
Tommy Dowd was with him, and Duane asked
Tommy if it’d be alright if he came and
watched part of the session. And Clapton
said, “Watch? Hell, come on and play!”

Were
you there while they were recording the
song “Layla”?

I was there for
part of the first of it, and then I had
to go back up to Macon. I came back down
at the end of it. At one point of
it,toward the end, we all got in there –
both bands – and did a real long jam. We
got it on tape. It’s like a medley of
blues songs.

It sounds to me
that Clapton pushed Duane into playing
beyond what he was doing before then.

You know, Duane
liked that. He always said, “I like
somebody onstage kicking me in the ass,
so I’ll do better,” which I like myself.

It sounds like a
lot of parts on “Layla” are Duane’s
rather than Eric Clapton’s.

You got it right.
On that song itself, he’s got 12 tracks
on there.

In something like
“Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad,”
sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s
playing what, and then all of a sudden
Duane’s “Joy to the World” lick comes
in.

Oh, yeah!
[Smiles.]

An early shot of the
Allman Brothers Band

When you got the
Allman Brothers band together, some of
the press proclaimed Duane the father of
the band. Is this accurate?

That would be real
accurate.

How much musical
direction did he provide?

He had to do with
a lot of the spontaneity of the whole
thing. He was like the mother ship,
right? He had this real magic about him
that would lock us all in, and we’d all
take off. Yeah, he really had that
quality.

How much time did
the band spend playing together before
the first album?

Oh,
we used to play every day. Every day.
Because for the first album, they said,
“Y’all got two weeks. Get in there and
do it, and get out.” Yeah, we cut that
album in two weeks.

What was the first
big break for the Brothers?

When it got
together! [Laughs.] My brother always
felt, and I learned from him, that if
you lay down a sound, if it’s a hit in
your heart, then it’s a hit. I don’t
care how many it sells or how many like
it or whatever – play what you want to
play and stick to your guns. That’s how
we got out of playing Top-40 stuff, and
that’s probably what started me to
writing songs. He was really that way
about it. He did his thing, you know,
and if you like it, fine. And if you
don’t, fine.

Did Duane take
stardom easily?

Um. [Long pause.]
Well, the real heavy stardom . . . Let
me see. He was pretty shy about that
sort of thing. No, he didn’t. He was
just one of the gang, man. The same dude
that hung around with Shepley and shot
pool. He thought about it the same way I
do – you’re just another person.

What do you think
were the best representations of Duane’s
live and studio sounds with the Allman
Brothers?

The best things he
did? Wow, man, I like ’em all. He did
some incredible things on – it wasn’t
studio – “Mountain Jam.” “Please Don’t
Keep Me Wonderin’” – there’s some good
slide on that. Let me see. “Revival.”
Things like “Leave My Blues at Home.” I
know what! “Dreams.” He did one hell of
a job on the solo on that. Yeah.

Sometimes in his
solos – like on that Boz Scaggs album
and at the end of “Layla” – he did that
really high part that almost sounds like
birds.

That’s what it was
supposed to be! He put the bottle way up
there by the top pickup.

Did he have any
unusual recording methods?

He changed a lot.
Like down in Muscle Shoals, he’d take a
[Fender] Princeton amp and turn it on
full blast, you know, and cover it with
baffles. He was always working with Fuzz
Faces and everything like that, and then
he threw all that crap away and got the
right amps for the right sort of thing.
Like when he started working with
Marshalls, he found out that the 100 was
not it, so he used 50 cabinets.

Did he play really
loud?

Yeah.

Was he usually
standing up when he played?

Oh, yeah, Oh,
yeah.

What the
difference between what his playing on
records and what he did by himself?

He did a lot of
country blues when he was by himself, on
a steel-bodied National or a Dobro,
something like that. A lot of time he’d
go into the bathroom, you know, with the
tiles. I’ve got a picture of him leaning
against the sink, and you can see the
toilet there and the toilet paper roll.
He’s sitting there with a Les Paul. I
can hear it, you know [laughs]. It’s a
great picture! I’ve got one and Dickey’s
got one.

Was that the one
that appears in the Duane Allman
Anthology?

Yeah, right.
[Blogger’s note: Here we are referring
to the original two-record vinyl
pressing of this album, which included
an 18-page insert with Tony Glover’s
liner notes and many B&W photos.]

What
were Duane’s favorite guitars?

Well, for a long
time, he played a Telecaster with a
Stratocaster neck. This is during the
Hour Glass. In the Allman Joys he played
a 335 [Gibson ES-335]. Then he got a Les
Paul, and he loved that Les Paul, and an
old SG that he played slide on.

Did he play much
slide on the Les Paul?

No, not at all.

Just on the SG?

Right. Wait – I
might be wrong about that. A couple of
time, he might have. Dickey could
probably tell you more about that.

There’s a story
that Twiggs Lyndon traded you a car for
one of Duane’s Les Pauls?

Yeah, I traded it
to him for a car. See, the guitars I
play have to have a wide neck on them.
That particular Les Paul had a narrow
neck on it, plus it was a 1939 Hypercoup,
plus it’s Twiggs. I mean, you know,
Twiggs and Duane were real close. I
guess you heard about Twiggs [who died
in a freefalling accident]. His mama has
it now. And my brother had an old
Gibson, 1929 J-200, an oval hole and
with an archtop – I’ve got that one.

What happened to
his National?

The one that’s on
Dickey Betts’s cover? Dickey’s got it in
his living room.

Toward the end of
his life, who were Duane’s best friends?

John Hammond. All
of us, of course. He hung out with us a
lot. King Curtis, until he got killed.
Johnny Sandlin.

I recently
interviewed John Hammond about Duane,
and he had some beautiful stories to
tell.

He’s a beautiful
man.

He was so sad, he
was crying by the time we we’re done
talking.

Really? Yeah. I’m
a little choked myself.

Was Duane hard to
work with?

Not at all.

I
know if I had to be in a band with my
brother . . .

No, it wasn’t
brothers then. I mean, it wasn’t
brothers as you would think “brothers.”
He really respected what I did, and I
respected what he did. He’d lean right
against the organ. One thing he did, he
hardly ever looked down at his guitar
when he played slide. How he did it, I
don’t know. He just knew where he was
goin’, I guess, and he’d look back at me
and make me sing harder. And I loved it.
But every time I walk up on the stage, I
still feel like he’s standing right
there next to me.

The spiritual
connection is still strong.

Very. There’s not
a day goes by I don’t think of brother
Duane.

What was Duane
like outside of being in the band and
outside of music?

He was pretty
quiet. Homebody. He liked to bass fish.
He wasn’t very much a sportsman at all.

Did he play a lot
in his spare time?

Oh, yeah. Yeah.
He’d listen to music all the time.
Anytime you walked into his house, you’d
hear music playing.

Did he have a big
record collection?

Oh, yeah.

Did Duane ever get
married?

No.

I read, once again
in Rolling Stone, that Twiggs was going
to give Duane’s guitar to his daughter.
The story was Twiggs was broke and
someone offered him $15,000 for the
guitar, but he refused to sell it
because he thought it should go to
Duane’s daughter.

No, I don’t think
so. What would she have done with it? I
think he would have given it to a
musician. Which is probably what’s gonna
happen.

Did Duane ever say
what he wanted his legacy to be?

No, he never
talked much about dying.

How do you now
view the period of the band when Duane
was in it?

Very happy days.
We didn’t have much money. Well, Duane
had a substantial amount from sessions,
but nobody was rich. But we didn’t care
because we were playing our music, and
we’d come up with a new song. You know,
when a new song is born in rehearsal –
that’s why I like rehearsals just as
much as I do recording just as much as I
do playing live. Because when a new song
hatches out and it works and clicks,
man, it’s like Christmas time.

Do you have any
favorite memories of Duane?

Yeah, he was one
hell of a cat.

Anything else you
want to cover, Gregg?

[Long pause.] Only
that I think his music will live on a
long, long time, and I’ll support it as
long as I’m around. And I loved him.

Epilog

A few
months after the Duane Allman Special
Issue came out, Gregg called to say
thanks and to tell me that he gave a
copy of the magazine to their mother,
who kept it displayed on her living room
table.